[SOLVED] Please save my computer

Feb 25, 2020
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This is going to take some explaining so bear with me. I have a pc that I built with assorted parts mostly back in 2017 but some parts were older such as the case one of the HDD's and that's mostly it. when I first got windows 10 I installed it on my HDD and later used Acronis true image to make a copy of it and move it to an SSD. For the most part, I had no issues until recently.

I ran a Malwarebytes scan and without really looking at the issues it found I said to quarantine the items. I shut down for the night and it didn't really shut down so I forced the shutdown not really thinking much of it. the next time I tried to boot it gave me the error message Unmountable Boot Volume so I tried some fixes here:

https://www.technipages.com/windows-10-fix-unmountable-boot-volume-error

and here

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/unmountable-boot-volume-windows/

but neither worked. what I did notice was that for the bootrec /fixboot command prompt I got the message "Access is denied" so I tried fixing that using some tutorial on youtube like the following:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6gB5Akuyms


I also tried booting into safe mode but I was unable to do that at any point and could not find the option anywhere. The windows automatic repair function also would never start despite forcing shut down multiple times. Out of desperation I also tried a fix from a third party program called Aomei but nothing has worked. Is there anything I can do to salvage this?
 
Solution
Is there anything on PC you want to save?

On another PC, download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB - handy boot drive

How to get info off Drive you want to save
boot from installer
on screen after languages, choose repair this pc, not install.
choose troubleshoot
choose advanced
choose command prompt
type notepad and press enter
in notepad, select file>open
Use file explorer to copy any files you need to save to USB or hdd

Now I would clean install at this stage. You don't know what its moved and its safer if its possibly a virus.
follow this guide: https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/how-to-do-a-clean-installation-of-windows-10.3170366/

trying to fix things using...

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
Is there anything on PC you want to save?

On another PC, download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB - handy boot drive

How to get info off Drive you want to save
boot from installer
on screen after languages, choose repair this pc, not install.
choose troubleshoot
choose advanced
choose command prompt
type notepad and press enter
in notepad, select file>open
Use file explorer to copy any files you need to save to USB or hdd

Now I would clean install at this stage. You don't know what its moved and its safer if its possibly a virus.
follow this guide: https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/how-to-do-a-clean-installation-of-windows-10.3170366/

trying to fix things using bootres can waste a lot of time, easier to start again.
 
Solution
Feb 25, 2020
5
0
10
Is there anything on PC you want to save?

On another PC, download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB - handy boot drive

How to get info off Drive you want to save
boot from installer
on screen after languages, choose repair this pc, not install.
choose troubleshoot
choose advanced
choose command prompt
type notepad and press enter
in notepad, select file>open
Use file explorer to copy any files you need to save to USB or hdd

Now I would clean install at this stage. You don't know what its moved and its safer if its possibly a virus.
follow this guide: https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/how-to-do-a-clean-installation-of-windows-10.3170366/

trying to fix things using bootres can waste a lot of time, easier to start again.

I did make a USB media creation tool which is how I've been trying command prompt fixes but to be honest I really didnt want to do a clean install unless it was a last resort.
 
Feb 25, 2020
5
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10
well, @SkyNetRising might have some ideas about fixing it.

sometimes a clean install is fastest answer. Especially if you stuck outside the OS. See what he says.
I thought it over some more and realized you were almost certainly right and I should just bite the bullet and do what I have to so I would like to apologize for my reticence and say thank you for your prompt reply.
 
Feb 25, 2020
5
0
10
So I tried the clean install using the Windows 10 media creation tool and for whatever reason, all my drives gave me the same message of "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only be installed to GPT disks." which doesn't make any sense to me especially considering that I installed the original copy of Windows 10 one of these drives.
 
Feb 25, 2020
5
0
10
So I tried the clean install using the Windows 10 media creation tool and for whatever reason, all my drives gave me the same message of "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only be installed to GPT disks." which doesn't make any sense to me especially considering that I installed the original copy of Windows 10 one of these drives.
So I was able to fix that part with the solution in this video but I think it is working now.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilZJ2_-zSvA
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
So I tried the clean install using the Windows 10 media creation tool and for whatever reason, all my drives gave me the same message of "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only be installed to GPT disks." which doesn't make any sense to me especially considering that I installed the original copy of Windows 10 one of these drives.

I know you fixed it but that error occured because your hard drive was set up as MBR and Win 10 recognised your PC was capable of Using GPT drives and insists on them. The error is written by people who need to get out more... it should say something like "to install win 10 you need to delete all the current partitions and click next". Instead it is just confusing.

I had same problem 5 years ago, before I started answering questions here. I deleted C and suddenly my ssd, that literally 5 minutes before had win 10 on it, is telling me it can't do that now. I think i turned PC off at that stage and after a restart, deleted all the partitions and clicked next, and it worked.